why Sith lords took on apprentices. As you guys probably know, there was a serious amount of betrayal amongst the Sith. So my question is why did they even bother taking on apprentices. Pride, arrogance? It can't happen to me mentality? What is the logic in it.

You would think 1 Sith lord...just one...would have had the following thought:
Hmmm...maybe I will learn all I can to live forever and then just dominate the galaxy by myself. I need no stinking apprentice. I will kill all who ask. Why bother teaching someone else your secrets?

Can anybody explain the Sith's need to share secrets only to know you will be betrayed and killed? Makes no sense to me.

There are two quotes I remember seeing on Wookiepedia that correspond to this:

"If you seek to aid everyone that suffers in the galaxy, you will only weaken yourself … and weaken them. It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards… If you care for others, then dispense with pity and sacrifice and recognize the value in letting them fight their own battles."
-Kreia, KotOR II

"Choose someone as successor and you will inevitably be succeeded. Choose someone hungrier and you will be devoured. Choose someone quicker and you won't dodge the blade at your back. Choose someone with more patience and you won't block the blade at your throat. Choose someone more devious and you'll hold the blade that kills you. Choose someone more clever and you'll never know your end. Despite these cautions, an apprentice is essential. A Master without an apprentice is a Master of nothing."
-Palpatine, in some holocron

That makes sense, but it also would pretty much ensure the destruction of the Sith. If you are the only one, you have nobody to carry on the teachings should you fall. The Rule of Two did help the DlotS consolidate power, but it also existed to preserve the order.

Aye, while it would be Sith like to preserve life forever, most Sith recongized that it was simply something they had to do to ensure their line lived on. They trained apprentices so that the Sith could continue to last. Plus it meant that the single student had to become at least strong enough to kill the master, if not even stronger. This way, the Sith could focus the Darkside in two and also get stronger. While the law of one would be ideal, most Sith lords simply recongized that they would not achieve immoralty in their life.

In a sense, a Sith lord is more then willing to die by his/her apprentices hand, just they want to make sure that the appentice betters them first before they pass on the touch. The main exception was Palp and Vader, with the latter being a crippled husk of his former glory and Palp and Dooku, simply because Dooku may have died of old age by the time it came to pass his secerts on. Which would utterly break what the rule of two stood for.

They do it because authors do not spend the amount of time thinking about fictional universes as fans do and they are okay with making logical mistakes to further story.

RotS...retold by creme_brule, carnorjax1, qvos, dmiller, etc. etc. :D:D:D

How about this... pride. Legacy. The better the apprentice you train, the better you were.

Also, being a master like the Palpatine quote above. Without an apprentice, you're master of nothing.

And just the need to have help in ruling over people. Palpatine had a lot more power when he had Vader to dispatch wherever he needed him to go whenever.



Totally different question... I've heard it said that in RotJ both Palpatine and Vader were trying to turn Luke to the dark side, each with the thought of killing the other and taking Luke as an apprentice. Then why did Vader stop Luke from attacking Palpatine?

How about I answer your question with another question: Since when did evil have to adhere to the mere rules of logic?

The fact that they are Sith means that their moral and ethical paradigms skew to the illogical (at least according to our own ideas of what constitutes conventional logic). By the same token, to those who are evil, moral paradigms seem illogical.

To break it down for you: The Sith love only power. Those who have no power, according to the Sith philosophy, exist solely to try to obtain it, or be used by those in power. A master has power by exerting it over others. Hence, the relationship of Master/Apprentice is a symbiotic one in which the apprentice gives his master a measure of power, through submitting to his/her teaching, while all along attempting to obtain power from their master in the form of learning, training, etc.

It is the master's job to impart enough training and knowledge to their apprentic to make them powerful enough to be useful to the master's ends without freely giving so much that the apprentice can one day overthrow them. In this way, the master fulfills his needs in the relationship (which I will go into shortly). It is the apprentice's job to learn from the master all that he/she can, even when the master does not willingly or knowlingly impart upon the apprentice such knowledge. In this way, the apprentice fulfills his/her needs to attain greater power.

This is why only Sith Masters have apprentices. The master can only have true power by having an apprentice (read C'boath's rant to Thrawn about why he craved to train Luke) training it, teaching it, excercising control over it, controlling another being's education and molding them into who they will become, molding them into a powerful tool to be used at the master's discretion. However, the master must be careful not to allow the apprentice to become more powerful than his/herself or he/she is in mortal danger.

Masters seek out strong apprentices because the stronger their apprentice, the stronger they are, by extension, because they have total power over a powerful being. It is a master's greatest success and failure when an apprentice overthrows him because he has shown his own power through creating a more powerful Sith than they themselves were (thereby making the Sith Order stronger) but they have also failed in that they have lost their own tenuous grasp on power because, well, they're dead.

I always just looked at it as Vader protecting Palpatine since Palpatine was still Vader's master. But silly me, I should no better. That would be the simple answer.
Then again, I've only read one movie novel (Revenge of the Sith), so I'm not too in on the background of those little moments that have big effects.

Aye, I heard of that too. But just seeing Lukes final fight with Vader pretty much set the scene for me, Vader was clearly at a disadvantage the entire fight even when Luke was not making a active attempt to kill him. That either indicates that Luke was that much stronger, dispite only having a reltively small amount of training, or Vader was just not up to the standard he once was.

Ahhh, novelizations can claim any number of things, pretty much take it with a pinch of sait. Though those throughts seemed pretty correct. I think it was a combination of those things really. Anikin was a better apprentice, and much younger. Dooku was skilled, useful, but he was getting on and was weaker in raw force potencial then the other candidate. He was pretty much a place holder, useful for his connections and richness, not so useful as a long term legercy.

Plus, I don't really see Dooku as being able to ever overthrow Palpatine in a streight fight or in cunning anyway, while he was skilled, he was lesser in every way then him really.